Friday, November 14, 2003

Taufling's First Plane Ride

Taufling is currently winging his/her way south. It is her first time on a plane, and he is coming to see ME. Me, the favorite aunt already. That Taufling has class.

There are, of course, presents waiting. The spoiling begins. I have dear adorable booties I special-ordered from The Womb's bookstore and a Completely Legally Obtained mix CD entitled "Music To Be Pregnant By" (Taufling is just now developing his hearing, and no niece of mine is coming in to this world contaminated by Fifty Cent Piece, or whatever the hell that idiot calls himself.) The best present is little socks with plush horses on the toes. When you shake the horses, they rattle. I almost cried when I saw them: Taufling's first Daily Double.

When I hung up the phone with my sister this morning, ("See you later, incubator!" I always say. This never fails to amuse. Me, anyway) I told her to bring a sweatshirt or windbreaker or something. "It's getting chilly in the mornings," I said fretfully. "It was fifty-nine when I left for work."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "It's twenty-two degrees today," she said. Oh.

Email Warm and Smug at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

The Good Ol' Days

This week's You Just Out-Wrote The Author Award goes to D. Knowels, who pointed out that the Republican Congress did the nation absolutely no favors by obeying the Constitution when they approved Clinton's nominees. To wit, says D., behold Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders: "Her stand on masturbation really busted his butt because we all know he can't do anything for himself. That's why God made interns."

We must also distribute proper props and recognition to the guy who called in to Sean Hannity yesterday to say, "I'm glad it's so windy in New York. Now maybe Hillary can't fly in from Washington on her broom."

Impress me further, readers: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Thursday, November 13, 2003

WRITE YOUR OWN PUNCHLINE

Okay, I officially need professional help now. I have been PURPOSELY TUNING IN to the Republican filibuster in the Senate. Whoo-hoooo! It's a nonstop political cupcake bakin' party in there!

Quote of The Thirty Unending Hours (and that is saying something, people) comes to us courtesy of The Hon.Orrin Hatch, R-Sunny Valley. He was discussing Republican willingness to confirm Clinton judges, "even when," he said, "it was pretty tough to swallow."

Right then.

Dr. Phil, that unsexybeast, the other day featured a stage-frightened bride who was terrified of attending her own wedding, to which one hundred guests were invited. She announced this before a studio audience that was perhaps four times that large, as cameras beamed her deepest, darkest fears to approximately four million people.

Say it with me, America: Um....


Email The Once a Bridesmaid at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Isn't It a Lovely Day To Be Caught In a Soul-Sucking Traffic Jam

Seen: Plastic license plate holder reading "I (Heart) Mullets"

Heard: "The Gambler." Gotta know when to hold 'em! Gotta know when to fold 'em!

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

To the Veterans

Thank you.
And God bless.

Email The Grateful, Wimpy One at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Monday, November 10, 2003

Fud et Vin, Part Uno

Let’s talk food. Let’s talk wine. Let’s talk Food and Wine and also hot Australians, inappropriately named pastries, and equally inappropriately vibrating theme park joysticks.

The Wonderfully Expensive World of Disney inspires these things.

More than any of its Florida parks, Disney tends to kind of shove EPCOT aside with its foot, this astoundingly futuristic attraction that reeks 1985 like smell waves coming off my perm. If you lean your head very very close into Spaceship Earth, you can actually hear nobody drinking New Coke.

THE EPCOT FOOD AND WINE FESTIVAL CAST

-ANDY: Disturbing treasure trove of Disneyobilia and blogger good for engaging in screaming arguments about global warming while in ride lines. Must keep on good side, as he will from time to time lift heavy things for me and help with the more technical aspects of blogging, such as pointing out that it really helps if I fill out such fields as “post” before attempting to publish the page.

-G-FORCE: Fellow Catholic. Fellow wine snob. Fellow friend of Australia. God bless Gail.

-OOGIE: Fellow wine snob. Owns many cats. Shares apartment space with small child. Likes to get away from small child. With her on this one.

-FLIPPER: She of rollerblading fame. Also a wine snob. Drives a Camaro. Must also keep on good side, because of the Camaro.

and

-Me. I need no introduction. I shall accept no introduction. I simply am… moi, only drunker.

NOTES FROM BENEATH THE GIANT SCARY GOLF BALL

-I am just plain upset by how often peanut sauce follows me around causing trouble. Lookit: I like peanuts, alone or with friends. I like peanut butter. I do not like peanut sauce. A hard thing like a peanut simply should not be putting in appearances as a liquid thing like a sauce. It defies physics, common law, and all that is decent in the world.

I do not blame the peanut for this. The peanut is but an innocent bystander. It is the fault of people who create such scenarios as the following:

I’m in grad school. I’m starving. I go to the cafeteria, which has not served actual red meat since the Truman administration. I load up on a dish labeled “Chicken a la King.” I sit. I dig in. I take a huge mouthful of: Tofu in peanut sauce.

In and of themselves, these things are not “food” but “semi-food,” or “spackle,” which separately taste like “ass.” Together, they taste like mega-ass. Those sitting across from me said they had never seen a human being process so many emotions in such little time: Shock, followed by dismay, followed by horror, followed by furor, followed by nausea, all in a one-second interval.

So when the girls converged on a Japanese food vender selling pork on a stick dipped in peanut sauce, I indicated that I’d rather not partake as only a classy lady such as myself could (this involved taking a swig of Gatorade and feigning a nice long vomit upon nearby bushes, accompanying sound effects included.) I sat nearby and opened a package of crackers, ingesting peanuts in a peanut butter form, as God intended.

-We went to a cooking demonstration where I learned many things, among them the fact that a “scallion” is not a piece of Canadian sporting equipment, but a type of onion. Who knew.

The recipe involved slapping chicken breasts in a bowl of cocoa powder, pouring wine over everything, and using some sort of malicious-looking liquid identified as a “demi-glace,” which until yesterday I totally thought was a stripper's stage name. We all had a taste. Everyone nodded and burst into applause, which I couldn’t join, as I was too busy on Personal Hurl Patrol, because seriously: Chocolate and chicken. Are we running out of food combinations now? Am I supposed to mix tuna with blueberry Icees for Lent?

Also: What an utter waste of perfectly good dark chocolate, which the recipe says you’re supposed to shave and grind up and all. If the preservation of Gary Stevens’ life depends upon me making this recipe I’m hitting the drink-mix aisle and I’m rolling that sumbitch in some Nestle’s Quick.

The demonstration was narrated by a very stupid, very annoying woman who skipped right over all the hard-to-understand chefy things the chef guy was doing, like how to peel a tomato, (he peeled a tomato!) what the whole deal was with this demi-glace business, and how the chef guy managed to not cleaver this woman’s face off. But the Idiotically Obvious Stuff, the kind of crap even I can pull off, oh, we got a play by play of that. “And so,” she said as Chef Guy rolled the chicken breasts in the chocolate, “you’re just rolling the chicken breasts in the chocolate. You’re picking up the chicken fillets, placing them in the bowl, and you’re coating them with the chocolate, and then you’re putting them in the skillet. You’re just taking that chicken there, and kind of dipping it in the bowl. The chocolate is covering the chicken. And then—“

Because a huge mirror was suspended over the cooking area so that food plebes such as myself could marvel at the chickenization of the chocolate, we could see that Chef Guy’s white paper chef hat had four holes cut out of the top of it, which I found highly disturbing. Why? Was this a kindergarten snowflake project gone horribly wrong? Was it a fashion statement? But I never heard anything about it, certainly not from Annoying Woman, because this was interesting and immediately recipe-related.

Favorite part of the cooking demonstration: Guy wandering by the pavilion and hollering, “Come on, Emeril!”

-I was forced to be amused by sort of animatronics show called “Food Rocks,” in which a dancing milk carton and a singing peach told me, here at the Food and Wine Festival, not to eat rich and fatty foods. The attraction also featured a pineapple with a pimp mustache that played the piano. This made me sad, and slightly afraid.

“Food Rocks” will shut down over the winter. I can’t imagine why.

More later. I have to get in my car and drive now due to the fact that I work in an extremely sick and twisted office where, on birthdays, we give the birthday-ee an individual birthday gift AND take them out to lunch AND pay for our own meals. That's OK, I didn't need that extra twenty dollars to, like, pay my electric bill or anything.

It's my boss' birthday tomorrow. It is times like this when it's extremely handy that I don't care about my job, because honey, you're getting a card from Wal-Mart and a Bic pen and you're liking it.

Email tuna and Icee recipies to: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

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